Bayram and Devetsikiotis Win Best Paper at SmartGridComm 2012

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Dr. Michael Devetsikiotis, and his PhD student Islam Safak Bayram, have won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications. The paper, entitled "Strategies for Competing Energy Storage Technologies in DC Fast Charging Stations," has been co-authored with George Michailidis, a faculty member from the University of Michigan, and Dr. Babak Parkideh during his time at the NSF FREEDM Systems Center. It will be presented on November 5-8, 2012 in Tainan City, Taiwan.

The authors propose an intelligent design of fast charging station architecture that ensures grid reliability. The critical component of their architecture is the energy storage, which is used to smooth the stochastic customer demand. "On the other hand, the choice of energy storage is application dependent; there is no single right answer. We developed a metric that enables researchers to compare the candidate energy storage technologies at fast charging stations. Moreover, we showed that optimal charging strategies, depending on the type of the energy storage employed at fast charging stations can increase the number of vehicles charged with the same amount of grid resources. Since the deployment of fast charging stations is in its infancy stage, our contribution will provide insights to network planners," says Professor Devetsikiotis.

Islam Safak Bayram won the Student Travel Grant at a previous Smart Grid Communications Conference, and continues his work in this field. The Network Performance Research Group, led by Dr. Devetsikiotis is actively engaged in the optimization and control of Smart Grid networks.